Page 149 of Kingmakers, Year Three

“That’s just my highly-tuned reflexes,” Leo grins. “If there is a murderer behind us in a hockey mask, you’re gonna be glad I’m not laying back in my seat half asleep.”

“I’ll go!” Cat says, gamely. “As long as there’s popcorn.”

She glances at me to see if I’m amenable.

“In Moscow we eat sunflower seeds at the movies,” I tell her.

“We’ll sneak those in, too,” Leo says.

I pause a moment, wanting to ask Leo something before we land.

“Leo . . .” I say.

“Yeah?”

“Did you tell your mother what happened? At Christmas?”

“Yes,” Leo nods, his smile fading.

“Was she . . . how did she take it?”

“She was devastated,” Leo says, simply. “She always hoped that she and Adrian would reconcile eventually. She wrote to him every year on their birthday. I don’t think he ever wrote back.”

I nod, slowly.

I never saw those letters, but I’m sure Leo’s telling the truth.

“My father could be very cold. His capacity for love was . . . limited. And conditional.”

“Well,” Leo says, quietly. “I can only imagine the pain he suffered.”

I can see on Leo’s face that there’s regret on both sides. I was raised with anger, he was raised with sorrow. The difference between his mother and my father.

We pass over the Great Lakes as the plane begins to descend. The vast, shining bodies of water each look as large as an inland sea. Around the edge of Lake Michigan, the gleaming spires of downtown Chicago jut up into the sky: opulent and golden-hued in the late-afternoon sunshine.

My heart rises up in my throat.

I’m finally returning to the city where I was born.

I never thought I’d make this journey alone.

But I’m not really alone—Cat slips her hand in mine.

Across the aisle, my cousin smiles at me.

“You’re gonna love it,” he says.

We disembark the plane and retrieve our luggage from the conveyer belt. Then walk past the security gates.

I see Leo’s parents waiting for us—his father as tall, tan, and athletic as his son, his hair graying but still thick and wavy. Sebastian Gallo wears a pair of stylish eyeglasses and a neatly-pressed polo shirt tucked into slacks.

Next to him, a tall blonde woman pushes a space-age pram. I look at her face and I see . . . something painfully familiar to me. The high cheekbones, the stubborn jaw, the full lips and eyes of that unusual shade that I’ve only seen twice in my life: on my father’s face, and my own.

She is Adrian Yenin’s twin in every way.

Except that the moment she sees me, her eyes fill with tears. She opens her arms and wraps them around me, pulling me tight against her in a hug.

“Dean,” she says. “I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”

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